The present invention relates to a part feeding and assembling system. More particularly, the invention concerns an assembling system which can be applied to the assembling of a great variety of parts.
In the recent years, industrial products tend to be manufactured in more and more multifariousness on a small batch production basis with the types or models of the products put on the market being changed from time to time. Under the circumstance, there arises demand for an assembling and manufacturing system which can offhand accommodate itself to such situation.
In the assembling and manufacturing line, a part feeding system provides a great obstacle to a full automation of the assembling process. For promoting the fully automated assembling process, the so-called universality of the part feeding system which can accommodate itself to all sorts of parts is indispensably required. Accordingly, there exists a great need for the development of such universal part feeding and assembling system.
In the hitherto known part feeding and assembling system such as, for example, disclosed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 186,151 filed Sept. 10, 1980, now U.S. Pat. No. 4,383,359, issued May 17, 1983, a bowl 1 serving for storing parts is provided with a conveying, or transporting track 2 for feeding the stored parts in a row, a chute 3 mounted at the outermost peripheral portion of the conveying track 2 in continuation thereto and a chute end portion 6 designed for holding the discharged part in correct position and attitude so that the part can be taken out by means of a handling mechanism, as is shown in FIG. 1 of the accompanying drawings.
In the part feeding system 8 mentioned above, the conveying or transporting track 2 is equipped with a wiper or baffle 4, a cutout 5 and others for the purpose of aligning the parts in a single layer in a row and allowing only the parts positioned in a prescribed attitude to be fed while those parts positioned in unwanted attitude are caused to drop in the bowl 1. Additionally, the chute 3 is provided with a part attitude sustaining member 7 for holding the parts selected and fed along the conveying track 2 in the attitude in which the parts are transported.
With the structure of the part feeding system described above, the wiper 4 and the cutout 5 provided on the conveying or transporting track 2 as well as the part attitude restricting member 7 mounted on the chute 3 have to be newly designed every time the configuration and dimensions of the parts are changed, making it impractical to adapt offhand the part feeding system to a great variety of the present-day manufacturing lines operated on the small batch production basis, providing a great obstacle to the promotion or realization of the fully automated manufacture.
As an improvement of the part feeding system described above, there has been proposed a structure of the part feeding system 8 in which the wiper and the cutout provided on the conveying or transporting track are replaced by optoelectric switches 9A, 9B and the like for detecting the attitude or orientation of the parts being fed along the track 2 to thereby discharge only those parts positioned in the wanted or prescribed attitude to the chute 3 while the other parts are blown off into the bowl 1 by means of an air nozzle 10, as is shown in FIG. 2. However, this type of part feeding system still requires the end portion 6 and part attitude sustaining member 7 for holding the parts discharged to the chute 3 in the attitude as it is. This means that the part attitude sustaining member 7 has to be altered in design when the shape and size of the part to be handled are changed, rendering the part feeding system inadaptable instantly to a variety of small batch production, to thereby cause a disadvantage.
As another approach for solving the above problem, it has been proposed that the parts are allowed to be discharged to the chute 3 without imposing any restriction on the parts in respect to the position and attitude, wherein the parts are picked up as the images with the aid of a television camera or the like to recognize the attitudes and positions of the parts by appropriately processing the image or video information thus obtained. The parts are then picked up by a handling mechanism such as an industrial robot whose operating position is varied or controlled on the basis of the results of the recognition processing. However, this system also suffers from such shortcoming that the parts which cannot be used must be manually returned to the bowl, making thus impossible the full automation.